CHAPTER 52

Alice Hawthorne’s wedding ring wasn’t what I’d pictured. The diamond, singular, was small. The bands, which had been soldered together, were thin and made of gold. I’d been expecting platinum and a stone the size of my knuckle, but this wasn’t ostentatious.

It looked like it had cost a few hundred dollars at most.

“You should take it to her.” Jameson looked from the ring to my face. “Alone, Heiress. Zara clearly sees this as an issue between her and you.”

I saw something inside the band then. 8-3-75. A date, I thought. August third, nineteen seventy-five. Their wedding date?

“Avery?” Grayson must have seen something on my face. “Is everything okay?”

I took my phone out and snapped a picture of the inside of the ring. “Time to make a trade.”

“Nan just… gave it to you?” Zara somehow managed not to choke on those words. “Legally. She transferred its ownership to you.”

I got the feeling that this could go south very quickly, so I reiterated why I was here. “Nan gave me this ring to trade you for your father’s ring.”

Zara’s eyes closed. I wondered what she was thinking, what she was remembering. Finally, Zara reached for a delicate chain around her neck and pulled a thick silver band out from underneath her lacy dress-shirt. She closed her fist over it, then opened her eyes. “My father’s ring,” she agreed hoarsely, “in exchange for my mother’s.”

Her hands shook as she undid the clasp on the chain. I handed her Alice Hawthorne’s ring, and she handed me the old man’s. Unable to resist the impulse, I turned the ring in my hand, looking for an inscription, and there it was—another date. 9-7-48.

“His date of birth?” I asked, taking a stab in the dark.

Zara didn’t have to glance down at the ring to know what I was talking about. This was the only thing her father had left her. I had no doubt she’d been over it with a fine-tooth comb.

“No,” Zara said stiffly.

“Your mother’s?”

“No.” She brushed off the question in a way that distinctly discouraged follow-up questions, but I had to ask at least one.

“What about August third, nineteen-seventy-five,” I said. “Was that the day they got married?”

“No, it was not,” Zara replied. “Now, if you could please take that ring and see yourself out, I would greatly appreciate it.”

I walked toward the door, then hesitated. “Didn’t you wonder?” I asked Zara. “About the inscription?”

Silence. I started to think she had no intention of replying, but just as my hand closed around the doorknob, Zara surprised me. “I did not have to wonder,” she said tersely.

I glanced back at her.

Zara shook her head, her grip on her mother’s wedding ring iron-tight. “It’s a code, obviously. One of his little games. I’m supposed to decode it. Follow the clue wherever it leads.”

“Why didn’t you?” If she’d known that there was meaning to this bequest, why hadn’t she played?

“Because I don’t want to know what else my father had to say.” Zara pressed her lips together, and something about her expression made her look decades younger. Vulnerable. “I was never enough for him. Toby was his favorite, then Skye. I was last, no matter what I did. That was never going to change. He left his fortune to a total stranger rather than leaving it to me. What else could I possibly need to know?”

Zara didn’t seem so formidable now.

“Nan said to tell you something.” I cleared my throat. “She said to tell you that ‘we all do what we have to do to survive.’”

Zara let out a low, dry laugh. “That sounds like her.” She paused. “I was never her favorite, either.”

The tree is poison, Toby had written. Don’t you see? It poisoned S and Z and me.

“Your father left Skye a clue, too.” I didn’t know why I was telling her this. I shouldn’t have been telling her this. Grayson had been very clear in his warning: Zara and Skye couldn’t find out that Toby was alive.

“At True North, I assume?” Zara really was Hawthorne. She’d seen the meaning in the will. She just hadn’t cared. No, I thought. She cared. She just wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of playing.

“He left Skye a picture,” I said softly. “Of you and her and a guy named Jake Nash.”

Zara sucked in a breath. She looked like I’d slapped her. “Now would be a good time for you to leave,” she said.

On the way out, I placed her father’s wedding ring on an end table. I’d committed the date to memory. I’d gotten what I needed.

There was no reason for me to take this from her, too.